Talk:Wizarding genetics
friggen confusing. >.<--AngelicDemon92 23:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC) :er, yes, and I'm not wholly convinced. The general population must have a very low incidence of magical genes, otherwise there would be a lot more wizards. Wizards are something like 5,000/50,000,000 or 1/10,000 of the population of the uk. So virtually no random matings result in a wizard. Thus almost certainly, any wizard who marries into the general population would be marrying someone with no magical genes. An AABB pureblood wizard would have guaranteed magical children, but an AaBb wizard marrying a muggle would have a 3/4 chance that any child would be a squib. I think Rowling gave the impression that it is more likely than not that any wizard marrying a muggle would have magical children. Squibs appear to be somewhat rare, but given the constant influx of new muggleborns, who almost certainly have an AaBb complex, then surely there would be a lot more of them than appears to be the case in the books. All the same, it fits reasonably well the observed pattern. Now, what might be the situation if one of the genes is relatively common in the general population, but the other relatively rare? Sandpiper 13:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC) :This is a very interesting theory. I'm concerned, however, that it might not be canon. Can anyone give some sources, or if there are none, at least put a theory tag? :Now I'll have to go check if we have a theory tag.... [[User:Chosen One|'The' Chosen One]] (Choose me!) 13:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC) Yup, this is a theory. Googled it and saw it on Mugglenet and a bunch of other places. Pretty good one two. User:Lemniwinks This appears to be non-cannon. While I don't think it should be deleted, it definitely needs some tags. Also alternative explainations need to be addressed. You could get similar results using other multi-gene ideas (especially a recessive gene and a dominant gene. you can also have partial penetrance. Heck, You could even have midicholrians result in a better explaination!! Somebody put some tags on this! I would but don't know where they are. IthinkIwannaLeia 21:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC) Merging I think we should merge this with Blood Purity, and have Blood Purity be the main article. Mafalda Hopkirk 05:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC) :I don't think it's even needed. It contains too much Original Research, and none of the article is backed up by any evidence from the series. - [[User:Cavalier One|'Cavalier One']](''Wizarding Wireless Network'') 08:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC) Variant Theory on Wizard Genetics I also like the orginal at least one A and one B method, but I would like to propose a variant as well. In this case if a pureblood married a muggle you would not have a wizard, that is the main difference from the orginal, but I think this could make sense if that was the case, but I do not believe JK ever has a pureblood marry a muggle and have offspring, so I am not sure who is correct, but I just wanted to put my own theory out there. : While studying for genetics I began thinking about Harry Potter and wizard genes. I actually looked it up and there are pretty odd methods... but, I was able to come up with a pretty simple schematic that allows for some muggles to give birth to wizards and for wizards to give birth to squibs. This uses Mendelian Inheritance. First you know that we have DNA and that DNA contains genes at certain loci. These genes have variants called alleles. In this instance the wizarding genes are not sex-linked so they affect males and females the same and are located on autosome, or a chromosome that is not one of your two sex chromosomes. Chromosomes are what DNA forms into in the nucleus when the cell is getting ready to divide. When it is not in chromosome form it is simply in long strands called chromatin. Anyways, before cell division your chromosomes line up and pair with their homologous pair and this is when scientists can identify your chromosomes and form a karyotype or a “map” of the homologous pairs. Now, when these are lined up we can assume that a scientist has located the locus of the wizarding alleles on a certain homologous pair, however, something interesting has occurred and said scientist realized that it was not at just one locus, but the gene is affected by two loci. This means that more combinations are possible. Thus, instead of wizard, muggle, and half-wizard, we get into the world of Harry Potter where there are not half-wizards, but mudbloods (excuse my language) and squibs, which are not half-wizards at all. And a half-wizard would suggest incomplete dominance or codominance anyways, but that is more genetics than is needed at this point. Now all of this is great and all but it does not show us how the wizarding gene and the others that are variants of the wizarding gene are inherited. So for those of you who skipped ahead, you might not get the terminology, but you get the nitty-gritty stuff. Now, just to show you why you cannot have the half-wizard theory where only one locus is involved let us pretend that was the case. Now the alleles will be H for wizard and h for muggle where H is dominant of h. The possible combinations are HH a full-blooded wizard, Hh, a half-blooded wizard, and hh, a muggle. This theory would allow for characters like Hermonie, but not for squibs. Also, if this was codominance or incomplete dominance, a half-blood's power would be either half that of a normal wizard, or just off and on, as in sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not. Now that you know that this is not the case, let us consider the two loci theory that I, or the scientist, proposed earlier. In this case we will use A and a, and B and b, where A is recessive to a, and B is recessive to b and at least BB or AA must be present to create a wizard. The possible combinations in this case would be AABB, a pureblood, AaBB, AABb, AAbb, aaBB which are wizards, but mudbloods, AaBb, Aabb, aaBb which account for squibs or people who are muggles that have at least one allele for a wizard, so they may have had a wizard in their far past and just not know about it, but also be able to produce a wizard if they marry the right person, and aabb, which is a muggle. AB Ab aB ab AB AABB AABb AaBB AaBb Ab AABb AAbb AaBb Aabb aB AaBB AaBb aaBB aaBb ab AaBb Aabb aaBb aabb This is my dihybrid cross to show how I found all of the different combinations. This accounts for all people in the Harry Potter world. Both of Hermonie’s parents must have had either one A or one B and Hermonie is either AAbb or aaBB she could also be AABb or AaBB, but I find this unlikely as we never hear of her having a relative distant or close that is a wizard as well and your odds of having family members that are wizards goes up the more large letters you possess. In this line of thinking her parents could have been AaBb and Aabb or AaBb or aaBb, Aabb and Aabb, or aaBb and aaBb. All of these chances allow for Hermonie to be a wizard. Furthermore, this also means, if her parents were somehow in some rare weird way both AaBb, Hermonie could be a pureblood with AABB and therefore Malfoy could have been wrong… if here parents were both AaBb she would have had a 4 in 16 or 1 in 4 chance of being a pureblood, but, as I mentioned, the fact that even one of her parents is that seems very unlikely. As for the Black's, Malfoy's, and Ron and the rest of his family, they are all most likely AABB or "purebloods" because all of their family that we have met are wizards. However, it is possible that one of Ron's parents could have been AABb or AaBB and the other still AABB. This would mean that, if Ron was AaBB and Hermonie was AAbb, they have the chance of having a squib, or an AaBb child. However, as we can see in the final book, it seems all of their children are wizards, so it is most likely that Ron is AABB. Now that you can see how both muggles and wizards can have the opposite I hope you can see how I believe my method shows the genetics of the wizarding world. Comment if you have questions! Now back to studying for genetics (: : 00:28, September 25, 2012 (UTC)Eileen Stefansky 00:28, September 25, 2012 (UTC)